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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26688793">she could almost be</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches'>forpeaches (bluecarrot)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon - Book, F/M, Longing, Masturbation, Post-Canon, Post-Stoneheart, Short One Shot, Soft Pining, Sort Of, but it’s mild and he deserves it, i guess that’s a tag-able offense idefk, low-key but it happens, masculine embarrassment, mention of Jaime’s anatomy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:09:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,194</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26688793</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>they sleep together - only sleep ...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jaime Lannister &amp; Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>265</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>written 27 sep 2020.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They sleep together under one cloak, curled together for warmth, both waking when either one has to turn over. She’s hard asleep soon enough, worn out with grief and the whole-body effort of healing.</p><p>Her hair is bright under the half-moon, and her freckles stand out livid.</p><p>In this light she could almost be —</p><p>He rolls over, jerking the cloak along with him, and she shivers, not waking.</p><p> </p><p>In the early light, strained through trees and a low thin fog, Jaime is awake again. And uncomfortable.</p><p>If his cock had to wake, did it have to be with her?</p><p>Hildy, he thinks. Pretty Pia. It hasn’t <em>only</em> been for the wench. And even if it were, who is to care? Who would ever know? He burned the last letter from Cersei and sleeps now with a maiden. He is as chaste as if he were a maiden himself. </p><p>No matter what his cockstand says about things. </p><p>Still ... “Brienne?” in a whisper.</p><p>No answer.</p><p>Jaime sits up and rubs his face, with the only hand left to him.</p><p>The cloak has fallen out from around her body. </p><p>He tucks it in.</p><p>He ought to get up properly. Make the fire. Water the horses, and tidy himself. Finish off what his dreams began.</p><p>Instead of that he bends down and pushes the hair off her wounded cheek. “Sleep, wench,” he says. His hand hovers a moment over her mouth: but no. “Rest.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>brienne did not look at him in the baths at harrenhall — but since then, she’s looked quite a lot.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>29 sep 2020.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was true, what she told herself: she hadn’t looked at him in the baths. Not enough to see anything more than shadow and movement. The curve of arse, the line of thighs. An expanse of skin across his chest.</p><p>And his eyes watching her above the steam.</p><p>She’d crawled out of the baths herself in a fury, a sort of leaden haze that left her no space to reflect. It was always that way with her temper.</p><p>He’d looked at her once and his gaze slid away.</p><p>Of course it had. She was — she was — and Jaime was so —</p><p>Half a god. </p><p> </p><p>She raised her eyes to look at him now and all the things she hadn’t noticed, all the sight the shadows hid, every part of him that was more man than god, it came to her mind with as much clarity as if she’d openly stared.</p><p>She was blushing. She felt it.</p><p>Jaime raised an eyebrow.</p><p>”The fire is warm,” she said.</p><p>He frowned at that — at <em>her</em> — but he couldn’t read the space between her ears, could he? Although he’d been looking close enough to notice her cheeks going pink. Even in the darkness, he’d been looking. And this time he hadn’t turned away.</p><p>The place between her legs felt tight. “I’ll take first watch,” she said.</p><p>“You think we need it?”</p><p>“I — I’m —“</p><p>He yawned. “Stay awake if you’ve a mind.” And he rolled on his side, away from the fire and away from her.</p><p>She waited until his breath evened and slowed before she slid a hand into her breeches, thinking of what she hadn’t thought of before — the way his skin reflected the firelight, the way he called her <em>wench</em> like it was a love-bite, a mark to remember him by when he was gone.</p><p>“Jaime,” she said on a gasp. <em>Jaime</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>loosely connected to the first, like, maybe it’s the following night? don’t think about it too much.</p><p>i promise i’ll write sometime more substantial soon.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>29 september 2020.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She’s at the inn, she’s at the inn again and Biter is coming towards her and she has only one hand to hold her sword, only one hand and it’s the wrong one and she knows what will happen if she fails. <em>Jaime, </em>she tries to say. He gave me the sword, the magic ...</p><p>“Quiet,” says Jaime; he's shaking her awake, looking pale in the moonlight. “Gods, but you have a set of lungs on you.”</p><p>“Sorry.” Swallow down bile; swallow down fear. It was a dream. Only a dream. It was real before, she thinks -- this time it is a dream. “I am sorry to wake you.”</p><p>“We all have nightmares.” He’s watching her — he’s so close by. “Do you know what you said aloud at the end?”</p><p>She has no idea.</p><p>“You said, I am not his whore.”</p><p>She’d hoped he wouldn’t learn that taunting name; somewhy it hurts more than being named<em> the Beauty</em>. “That is what they called me. The — the Brotherhood with Lady Catelyn. Stoneheart. Kingslayer's whore, they said.” His eyes are steady; she stumbles on. “I was sick, with what Biter — what he did to my face, and the break in my arm. They said I called for you in my fever.” She cannot look at him now. <em>It is not like that between us.</em></p><p>“A fever-dream does not make you a whore. Much less mine.”</p><p>“People see what they are looking to see. You need rest, ser. You may sleep again. I will stay on watch.”</p><p>“Not if I’m to be woken by more screaming.”</p><p>“I said I would not sleep.”</p><p>“So, I’ll keep you good company,” he says: and his voice is all light, but what is beneath it? She cannot see anything but ghosts and treachery in this moonlight. He says: “What else did you say in these fevers, while they tended your wounds and healed you for the noose?” His hand reaches out to touch her throat where the mark — the bruise and burn - must still be visible. Livid.</p><p>Swollen, she thinks, miserable. Purple and swollen, risen naked from the water and returned to some sort of life ...</p><p>And what sort of consciousness would that be? If she is to die, if they bring her back like they did to Stoneheart, what memory would drive her? She swallows hard.</p><p>“Wench,” he says, soft. “You aren’t weeping?”</p><p>“It’s the wind — it’s sharp in my eyes. Cold, I mean. Jaime, when I’m killed--"</p><p>“<em>When</em> you are--?"</p><p>“You’ll burn me, won’t you? You won’t let me come back like that. Changed, and angry.”</p><p>A moment passes. “You’d be a fearsome sight, to be sure,” he says. “A sort of ogre ... all your great hulking arms, and your big horsey teeth ...”</p><p>“I am in earnest. There was no reasoning with Stoneheart. No humanity left. She might as well have been ...”</p><p>“You would not become that.”</p><p>“No one who knew Lady Catelyn in life could have forseen her change. She was good and honest and true, and--"</p><p>“She was a wolf,” says Jaime. “She always was. I knew her from a girl. You only saw it at the end.” He touches her again, his hand lingering this time on her skin, fingers on her cheek, thumb dropping down almost to her mouth — almost.</p><p>She dares not breathe, lest he move.</p><p>He says: “You will never become what is not in you already.”</p><p>“I’m afraid of it,” she says — so low, he might only know the words by the wind on his hand -- so quiet that he might not have heard her at all. </p><p>But he shifts back. Tucks his arm below his head and shuts his eyes. “I’ll burn you,” he says. And: “No more screaming, now, Brienne?”</p><p>“No more tonight,” she says, and sleeps dreamless, obedient.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jaime’s a grow-er, not a show-er. Erm, emotionally speaking</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They are not lovers. They do not, strictly speaking, even sleep together. And certainly Jaime has never kissed her.</p><p>But every morning now he wakes to find that they’ve reached for one another and found each other in the night time. Now her elbow is on his back, now a thigh pressing against his thigh, and once — he still thinks of it — her hand was around his waist, slid neatly under his clothing, skin resting on bare skin.</p><p>It is not his fault that she does this. </p><p>It is not her fault that he wants more.</p><p><em>Stupid stubborn ugly wench, </em>he thinks. She’s right there making the bedroll - no task for a man with one hand - and he is supposed to be tidying their saddlebags, but how can he do that or anything when she’s nearby?</p><p>If he kissed her, she would not speak to him again. There’s no use to think of it. He can see no world in which he may lay down with the Maid and have her rise up again as she was — unsullied - unflinching —</p><p>She had told him, slow and halting as usual, of how she was trained to kill. <em>I could strike the dummy,</em> she said, <em>but I hesitated to strike a man.</em></p><p>
  <em>It does not seem to bother you overmuch nowadays.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>My swordmaster sent me to kill the little — the new lambs, and suckling pigs.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A man is not a pig.</em>
</p><p><em>It seems to me, </em>said Brienne, <em>that the pigs were harder to bear.</em></p><p>She stood up then as if she had said too much, and rubbed a broad fist against her nose. </p><p>He wanted to kiss her then. He wants to do ten thousand things, many of them quick and many slow and lazy, to make her sigh with pleasure and call out in greed.</p><p>He wants — he <em>wants</em> —</p><p>Her leg against his leg; her arm about his waist, tucked in like it belongs there —</p><p>And just now, the long length of her turned away to watch the sky.</p><p>His heart aches.</p><p>“From here,” he says, “you look taller then the trees. And more massive.”</p><p>Her face is stiff. “Come on, then.”</p><p>They are not lovers: but he follows her into the morning. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the nighttime, it’s Jaime who yells.</p><p>Brienne sits bolt upright, hands grasping for her sword, her dagger, — <em>Where is it what is it where —</em></p><p>But the world is dark and soft. The only sounds are from little sounds of birds and insects chattering and the murmur of the wind.</p><p>Gradually her heart-beat slows; gradually her fingers loosen from the hilt. It is <em>Oathkeeper</em>, and Jaime is still making noise.</p><p>It’s not much anymore. After the first cry he only whimpered, and now and then whispered things she couldn’t understand, except for <em>No</em> and <em>Please</em>.</p><p>She ought to wake him. She would, but for her septa’s saying never to wake a dreamer, <em>if you die in a dream you die in life</em> ... Septa Roelle had said other things too, things that were less kind. None of them are easy to forget or disobey.</p><p>— but nothing is easy, is it? So Brienne touches him. “Jaime?”</p><p>No response. </p><p>She shakes his shoulder, hard. “You’re asleep and dreaming. It isn’t real. Wake up, Lord Commander!”</p><p>At that he is awake — or sitting at least, breathing ragged and quick. He’s got hold of her hand and he’s squeezing it in his own. “Brienne?”</p><p>”A dream only,” she says.</p><p>And he kisses her.</p><p>It is so unexpected, so shocking and so rough — his mouth on her mouth, his new beard on her chin, his hand still pressing hers — she can’t respond for a moment — even if she knew what to do. <em>I must stop this </em>she thinks in the space between heartbeats.<em> I must ...</em></p><p>Then his hand is cupping her jaw and he’s kissing her again, slow now and long, giving her space to respond, to reply, to kiss him back if she wants to do it — and oh, she wants to do it. It is so easy to want to do it. Has this what she’s been missing, is this why people risk everything for a rut up against the wall? She’s pushed a man into the fire for less but now she has her arms around a man and her hands fisting into his hair; now he bites her lip a little and makes her gasp, makes her open her mouth to take his tongue. She is hot and wanting and cannot think at all: is this what it’s like? Jaime.</p><p>He pulls away a little and she complains and he laughs, tugging her leg around his waist, fitting their bodies closer. Tight. The place between her legs feels tight, with him fitted so close.</p><p>Between it all she is kissing him, every part she can reach - lips and jawline and lips and eyes and lips again; he’s talking and she doesn’t care, she has never cared less what Jaime Lannister has to say than she does right now. <em>Wench</em>, probably, or <em>You’ll be my whore now really.</em> Who cares, who cares, don’t you stop —</p><p>His hand slips beneath her tunic and brushes a nipple and it sends a shock through her, it is lightning and cold water, what is she <em>doing? </em>Brienne scrambles backwards, off of him and back to herself.</p><p>Jaime stands too, with somewhat more difficulty. “I —“</p><p>“Don’t you talk. Don’t move. I’ll ... I have my ... I’ll ...”</p><p>He doesn’t move or speak or do anything recognizable — except that he is looking at her. </p><p>No one else looks at her. Not like Jaime does, without fear or flinching. Has he always done it?</p><p>She says, quiet: “You cried out in your sleep, ser. You had ill-dreams.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Was it — was it Hoat again? Was it your hand?”</p><p>“Yes. No.” He rubs his hair. “Not my hand this time. It was Hoat, yes, but I dreamt of you.”</p><p>She has to speak now. She has to do it. But he turns away. “Back to sleep, wench. I’ll not bother you any longer with reverie.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>reasons i need a thesaurus:<br/>-sleep<br/>-dream<br/>-says<br/>-mouth</p><p>and jaime has trouble standing up because his genitals are painfully engorged. <br/>just ... to be clear</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i have written! a miracle.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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